Cripple

One of our readings was written by Nancy Mairs and her story titled On Being A Cripple. This story of Nancy definitely caught me off guard. I understood her point of how she decided she would call herself a cripple thus giving this sort of power to her. It was interesting how she described "Cripple" to be a clean word that was straightforward and precise. I guess I do not naturally think of that word to be a clean word; instead I would imagine "handicapped" to be more of a clean word. Either way Mairs was correct by saying it's straightforward. 

I picture this labeling of her as a cripple is not just giving her power but more so giving power to other people. Yes, it gives her power by her telling people she is a cripple and it's almost as if she just admits it and says, so what? I think that is great but I also think that she is putting a label on herself and therefore allowing people to put limits on her. I agree with Mairs when she says, "whatever you call me, I remain crippled." The name cripple or handicapped or even disabled means the same thing- she is not physically capable of some of the things that others are. But to me putting that name on herself as "cripple", it's almost like she is saying that is her identity; that is who she is. That is where I think people begin to limit handicapped, crippled, or disabled people. 

I once did work crew for a week with special needs kids at a Young Life camp. It was a very eye-opening week for me. I really would say that week changed my view of the word "handicapped". At this camp kids who have lived in a wheel chair were able to go tubing behind a boat, kids whose arms were so weak and barely able to move played ping pong. Nothing magical happened, God did not all of the sudden heal their disease; what happened was ordinary people gave them hope and did not limit them. Ordinary people were willing to step out of their comfort zone, put all labels aside, and help them hold a racket. To me, it was almost as if their disease was being healed because I have had this idea of what being a cripple means. I had this idea that they could never do anything of those active events. I cannot explain how much I grew by the end of that week. 

That is why when I read this article it took me back because it seemed as though she was in a way allowing people to limit her by openly calling herself a cripple. I do not think Mairs' intentions were for me to get that idea out of this reading, because I do see her point about how it liberated herself to say "I am a cripple". 

Power in the hands of the Police

My news article titled "Police Shooting of Mother and Infant Exposes a City's Racial Tension" was written about a town called Lima in Ohio. This article presents a lot of information about the culture in the city and how diverse it is. What is interesting is that 27% of the community is African American yet out of 77 police officers, only 2 are African American. Because of this and many other issues Blacks feel gained up on by the police officers. These police officers execute their power in a racist way and now Blacks are taking a step forward. 

The article mainly focuses on the community and racial issues but the final straw was when Ms. Wilson was shot and killed for an unknown reason. Her baby was also shot and injured. The Police broke into Ms. Wilson's home with the intent of arresting her companion, Anthony Terry, for drug dealing. The community has done protests and held marches in response to what they think was a shooting because of her race. This news write-up really talks about the racism in the town and how it is only getting worse. 

What I do know about their culture is that it is very diverse but that does not mean everyone gets along. The majority of police officers do not live in Lima; they live in farm towns outside of Lima. What I would like to know is how these towns are segregated by neighborhoods. I would also need a lot more information from the police on how Ms. Wilson was shot. There are many questions a fieldworker would need to gather and I think a lot of them will come from either the Police or the neighbors of Ms. Wilson. The fieldworker would need to know more about other acts of racism from the police that can be further investigated. I think as a fieldworker I would study the other races within Lima and see how the Police treat them.

The fieldworker would need to go all around Lima and maybe even look at the farm towns where most Police live. This could explain how they have grown up and why they use power the way they do. There is a lot of information that could be further investigated as a fieldworker but as a journalist I feel like they did a great job at explaining the culture of Lima.

www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/us/30lima.html

Language with Context

 Carpe Diem! This means seize the day, as many people know even without studying Latin. I took four years of Latin in high school and learned enough to get by in Beginning level Latin at UT. I think there are many problems with the way we are taught a language and the main one being we don't have many outreach programs to give us more of a hands-on learning experience. Once you get to college you do have the privilege to study both the culture and the language at once doing Study Abroad. Doing this international study trip will teach you a language better than you could have ever learned it by sitting in a classroom. My problem with language is that I never really begun to learn and understand language on a deeper level. What I mean by this is that I never looked at the culture and why they use certain words in order to know what they were really saying.


I always saw language surface level. I would read books and take many of them pretty literal until the teacher would explain the metaphor the author was intending at. I remember being in English and being confused on how people could get one sentence to all of the sudden mean ten different things and provide life lessons. I would sit quietly trying to comprehend everything they said and not ever fully understand how they came to that certain conclusion.

I have realized how people can analyze literature and language and that is through studying the context more in depth. As I did a contextual analysis last semester I realized how much I had learned since high school English class. I also began reading a book last semester some might be familiar with called The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer. Tozer is a very well known author and his writing is very deep. I did have trouble understanding everything he said at first but I had to read 2-3 pages each day to not be overwhelmed. I also had to look at the context as to what he was referring to and that strengthened not only my reading but my knowledge of his language use. As I began to open my mind up more and more I realized how deep language really is. I also learned how a definition of a word does not tell you nearly everything about that particular word. This also allowed me to realize that when I see a sentence meaning one thing, someone else may take it to mean another.

The reason we get two separate ideas about the same sentence or word is because of nurture. It all goes back to our environment and how we have been conditioned to learn certain words to mean certain things. I feel like definitions limit you especially learning them at a young age. When you learn what a word means as you're young you just learn the basic word and maybe one or two qualities of it. This in my mind can make you very close-minded. I don't mean close-minded in an extreme negative view but I mean it in a way that you only know certain aspects of a word and forget there's more our there to know.

Learning language on a deeper level has opened my mind up to questioning and being more curious. The more you learn about the context of a language or even a word the more the word can be used and understood. I believe that my mind will never be able to comprehend how our language is unlimited and always changing. I almost feel like my view of society is at a place of learning right now. It's as if the more I learn about language, the less I feel I really know. This in turn effects how I think of society and that's why I'm at a place where I feel I will learn more and language and how it effects culture as I open my mind to learn the context.

Language as an act of creation

"What we are after here is to tell the story of language as an act of creation. This is what Socrates meant when he said, "When the mind is thinking, it is talking to itself." Twenty-five hundred years later, the great German philologist Max Muller said the same: "...thought cannot exist without signs, and our most important signs are words." This was a quote from "The Word Weavers/ The World Makers" that really captured me. I've never thought of language as an act and definitely never took time to think of the process of creating a language. My mind seems to just go around and around in circles when I try and think about language, words, definitions and how they all came to be. Nonetheless I will try and philosophize about what these quotes mean in my head. 

It seems like philosophers have been thinking about the act of language for a long time and it's strange to me that I haven't begun to really think about this until I got into this 102 class. I'm not sure what I can say about language as an act of creation but the one thing I do wonder a lot is who created our words? And why did they pick them? What gave these people the power to say what color is green or which one is called blue? When I begin to read the quote from Socrates it made me think that he's implying you must know words to even think. I may be confused on what point he was intending to get at but just because someone does not have words certainly does not mean they do not think. I think it means they think in very different ways than we do such as signs, visions, or symbols. Every person still has a soul whether or not they have sight or hearing. 

Even though you may have lost sight and hearing, you still have the ability to feel and to smell. It is psychologically known that your smell is directly connected to your memory. Therefore someone may not be able to see signs and hear words but that does not mean they do not think. They associate smells to events. Let's say you are blind and deaf but you touch a hot stove and then touch an ice cube. You know there is a difference between the two objects you touched and even though you don't have a word for hot or a word for cold you still feel the same thing as someone who knows the words hot and cold. What I'm trying to get at by this example is that your thoughts are not only connected to your words and I do agree with Max Muller saying words are our most important signs. But I  think they seem so important to us because it's all we mainly use. Words are just as important to us as signs are to deaf people. 

The example with feeling the hot verse the cold brings me back to the point of describing language as an act of creation. Someone has created these words so we are conditioned to know that the feeling we feel when we touch something hot is the word hot. The feeling doesn't change even if the word does. The same goes for any word we have. I may have taken these quotes out of context but that is what I get when I read them. My main point that I believe is that you are born with a soul and you have thoughts and are human even if you are unable to see or hear.